From owner-fegmaniax@gnu.ai.mit.edu Wed Nov 10 05:04:03 1993 Date: 10 Nov 1993 01:21:53 -0400 (EDT) From: DARAMSEY@vaxsar.vassar.edu Subject: the story from the back cover of "Eaten by Her Own Dinner" 12" To: fegmaniax@gnu.ai.mit.edu *An excerpt from "The Professor* by James Fletcher and Robyn Hitchcock* As Niobe stood in the queue, she had no idea that, the other side of the ice-cream stall, the three ghouls were seated on a polythene sheet pretend- ing to play Mah-Jong. They did not have to pretend very hard, because no-one was watching them. The drained yellow of their complexions absorbed the sunlight whole, transmitting no hint of their loathsome presence to the observant eye. Each wore thick bakelite sunglasses, and a Hawaiian shirt masked what they might or might not have had by way of a torso beneath. Each held an ice-cream cone, into which they drooled a foetid luminous blue paste that seemed to quiver with a life of its own until it settled into a realistic parody of ice-cream. "To the Throne, Deadcross", hissed the senior ghoul, passing him the filled up cone. "Aye- to the Throne", moaned the other two, clinking their cones together like foul revellers joined in a satanic toast, "Let the horns curl round into the General Brain, and all sorts of things fall out of the cupboard." "Aye- and the Gloans", intoned the leader. "The Gloans that bide", replied his subordinates. "Arrggh- bury us in mud, that we may drown like crimson shrimps", they all jabbered in unison, falling back emotionally drained. "Two bilberries, a laburnum and a sixty-nine!" yelled a voice from the ice-cream stall. Saxmundham Deadcross unfolded to his full height and stalked up to the van with his three blue ice-creams. A hand materialised from a greasy cat-flap to take them. Two seconds later the same hand thrust two empty cones into the upturned palms of the acquiescent ghoul, whereon he strode towards his fellows. "One banana and one asparagus- make it snappy, fellas", came the command from behind him. Timothy Fane winced: "Yeuch. Call this an ice-cream? I thought there was some kind of law against non-milk fats." "There is, but not in food", quipped Niobe with justifiable cynicism. "Anyway, if you must have asparagus every time. My banana's all right." "I should take this back if I were you." "Go on then, swap it for one like mine." "No, but you bought them." "So?" "They might not recognise me." "But they'll recognise the ice-cream." "Yeah, but I might have stolen it." "Stolen it?" enquired an incredulous Niobe, eyebrows raised, "From me?" "Yeah." "But if they've never seen you before, how will they know that it's me you've stolen it from?" "Because...because..." Tim cast his mind about, flustered. "Just because you don't recognise somebody doesn "Because...because..." Tim cast his mind about, flustered. "Just because you don't recognise somebody doesn't mean you can't sell them an ice-cream/" "Exactly. So back you go, darling." Tim stood up, and as he did so the sky darkened. Dead leaves blew in from the sea- though it was only July- and a crash of thunder shook the air. It became oppresively hot, and radio reception deteriorated. Tim held out his hands, his face a picture of martyrdom: From the middle of each palm, there welled a gush of dark red blood. Niobe sighed- it was always like this when he lost an argument. She bit her banana ice-cream and her teeth grated on something hard. "I LIKE bananas..." she said thoughtfully. "Because they've got no bones?" asked Tim "Well...yes. At least, that's what I've always thought, but..." She squeezed the little sphere between her finger and thumb. There was certainly something solid in there. "I think you'd better take this one back as well. Come on, let's bothe go and make a scene. They're disgusting." They went back to the stall and braved the reptilian eye of the white- hatted, cadaverous salesman. He was unsypathetic. "If you don't like asparagus", he snapped, "You shouldn't ask for it." He muttered something about "bloody tourists". "But look at this banana one", said Niobe, "It hasn't even been properly filleted." She poked it again with her finger, and dislodged a hard lump on to the counter, still smothered in pussy-looking yellow ice-cream. The man looked at it balefully, picked it up and held it under the tap. As the ice-cream ran off it, all three of them could see that it was the cap of a tube of toothpaste. The man began to look more doubtful. "Er...yes, well...that's different", he said, slowly. "Excuse me a minute." They heard an angry conversation from behind the stall, but only a few isolated phrases were intelligible: "...third time it "...third time it's happened..." "...quality control..." "...don't pay you to..." "...on an empty stomach..." "...seventeenth arch..." and then a high pitched whine of: "How was I to know?" The muttering continued as the man returned, still holding the offending foreign body in the palm of his hand. He dropped it into a trash can, and was in the middle of offering them- "at no charge, for you and the lady, sir"- a pineapple and anchovy sunday, when a grotesque female figure bolted out into the road, jabbering and clutching a large greasy sponge bag. An ominous voice hissed: "Miss Slugbelch, I shall have to discipline you if this kind of behavior continues. In any case, you know perfectly well that we always have to marinate them for five days if they're more than forty." She dissapeared into the back behind the stall again; and when Tim and Niobe went into the road to see what all the fuss had been about, they saw two jaundiced looking men pelting her with Mah-Jong tiles while she cowered in the sheet of polythene. "Good grief!" said Niobe, "I wonder who they're marinating?" she laughed merrily. Two hundred yards or so along the beach there was a ladder sticking vertically out of the sand. Near the top stood the man with the baggy green suit who so resembled Tim suit who so resembled Tim's unle, Professor Fane. He was peering intently through a pair of opera glasses at the bevy of ghouls as they enacted their petty squabble by the ice-cream stall, and as Niobe and Tim approached, he leaned dangerously outward. The ladder tipped ominously.... ********************************* That's all, boys and girls. Hope you enjoyed it. DaveR.